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WHATISSCIENTISM?
MIKAELSTENMARK
ReligiousStudies/Volume33/Issue01/March1997,pp1532
DOI:10.1017/S0034412596003666,Publishedonline:08September2000
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MIKAELSTENMARK(1997).WHATISSCIENTISM?.ReligiousStudies,33,pp1532doi:10.1017/S0034412596003666
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Rel. Stud. , pp. 1i Copyright # 1 Cambridge University Press
MIKAEL STENMARK
WHAT IS SCIENTISM?
Our Western society has been much shaped by scientic thought and dis-
coveries. We not only depend practically on science in our ways of living.
Our thinking and attitudes are also shaped by the theories and methods of
science. The overwhelming intellectual and practical successes of science that
lie behind this impact of science on our culture have led some people to think
that there are no real limits to the competence of science, no limits to what
can be achieved in the name of science. Or, if there are limits to the scientic
enterprise, the idea is that science, at least, sets the boundaries for what we
humans can ever achieve or know about reality. There is nothing outside the
domain of science, nor is there any area of human life to which science cannot
successfully be applied. This view (or similar views) has sometimes been
called scientism. (It has also been labelled scientic naturalism or scientic ma-
terialism. I will, however, try to show why we should not attribute the same
meaning to these three terms.)
Recently, a number of distinguished natural scientists have advocated
scientism in one form or another. (The scientists I have in mind in particular
are Francis Crick, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, and
Edward O. Wilson.) They have sold an enormous number of books.
(Hawkings A Brief History of Time has, for instance, reached n million
copies.) The views of these scholars have been discussed in newspapers and
been broadcast on television. If scientism has been around for a while the
great impact these advocates of scientism have had on popular Western
culture is new. They have brought not only science but also scientism right
into the living room of ordinary people. But of course one need not be a
scientist to be a defender of scientism. The view again, in one version or
another, is quite popular among philosophers these days." Some politicians
can even be viewed as its champions.# This article will focus mainly on the
rst group.
" See, for instance, Paul Churchland, Scientic Realism and the Plasticity of Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1), Daniel C. Dennett, Consciousness Explained (New York: Little, Brown, 11), and
Michael Ruse, Taking Darwin Seriously (Oxford: Blackwell, 186).
# Jawaharlal Nehru, the rst prime minister of independent India, wrote that : It is science alone that
can solve the problems of hunger and poverty, of insanitation and illiteracy, of superstition and deadening
custom and tradition, of vast resources running to waste, of a rich country inhabited by starving people.
Who indeed could aord to ignore science today? At every turn we seek its aid. The future belongs
to science and to those who make friends with science. Nehru quoted in Tom Sorell, Scientism (London:
Routledge, 11), i.
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16 xr i.ii s 1ixx.ni
So we have good reasons for trying to determine more exactly what
scientism is. Although the term scientism is frequently used, it is often not
clear what it signies. People have in fact given it a number of dierent
meanings. We must therefore distinguish between these dierent forms of
scientism. In this paper I shall explicate some of these conceptions of
scientism and relate them to one another.
At least some forms of scientism seem to oer a substitute for traditional
religions and thus present science itself as a religion or world view. Another
question I will therefore consider is whether scientism and traditional
religions (in particular Christianity) are incompatible or if they can be
combined in some way. What is the relationship between scientism and a
traditional religion such as Christianity? There are also other important
questions scientism gives rise to: What are the proper limits of science? Is
scientism really science? Is it reasonable to think that science is able to give
us salvation, that it can fulll the role of religion in our lives ? What legitimate
roles can science play in the formulation of a world view? To consider all of
the above questions is naturally beyond the scope of a single article. My aim
here is more modest. I will oer some preliminary observations in order to
clarify the dierent meanings the notion of scientism has been given and to
plot how these forms of scientism relate to one another and to Christianity.
1. s r ix1r s x wr 1nr x 1ni ..iixv
What dierent meanings has the notion of scientism been given by its
advocates and opponents ? One way the term has been used is to refer to a
program or strategy within science or the academy itself. Hence we could call
this version of it academic-internal scientism. Academic-internal scientism is the
attempt to reduce (or translate) an academic discipline into natural science
which has not previously been understood as a natural science, or, if that is
not attainable, to deny its scientic status or signicance (in some way). The
defenders of academic-internal scientism all maintain that the boundaries of
natural science can be expanded, in one way or another, into elds of inquiry
that have not before been considered parts of natural science. The socio-
biologist Edward O. Wilson expresses such a view as follows : It may not be
too much to say that sociology and the other social sciences, as well as the
humanities, are the last branches of biology to be included in the Modern
Synthesis .$
Sometimes, however, the reduction (or translation) does not stop there,
but continues even within the natural sciences themselves. For instance, not
only is, for example, sociology reduced to biology, but biology is also reduced
to chemistry, and chemistry to physics.
$ Edward O. Wilson, On Human Nature (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 18), p. o.
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wn.1 r s s r ix1r s x? 1
Both of these forms of scientism (let us call the former academic-internal
scientism
"
and the latter academic-internal scientism
#
) seem to be endorsed by
Francis Crick, the codiscoverer of DNA, who writes that :
eventually one may hope to have the whole of biology explained in terms of the
level below it, and so on right down to the atomic level The knowledge we have
already makes it highly unlikely that there is anything that cannot be explained by
physics and chemistry.%
We can perhaps dene academic-internal scientism as :
(1) The view that (a) all, or at least some, of the genuine, non-scientic academic
disciplines can eventually be reduced to (or translated into) science proper, i.e.,
natural science (academic-internal scientism
"
), and that (b) all natural sciences can
eventually be reduced to (or translated into) one particular natural science (academic-
internal scientism
#
).
The claim is typically not that it is possible right now to accomplish either
(a), or both (a) and (b), but that eventually it will be possible. However, its
supporters hold that we do at present possess grounds for believing that this
goal is likely to be obtained in the future. TomSettle says it is a programme,
not yet complete, the explanations only promissory notes in some cases, such
as the explanation of mentality by neurophysiology.&
1.1 Methodological Scientism
One common way of interpreting academic-internal scientism
"
is to under-
stand it as :
(i) The attempt to extend the use of the methods of natural science to other academic
disciplines.
Let us call this version, or similar ones, of academic-internal scientism
"
,
methodological scientism. Philip S. Gorski, for example, denes scientism as the
attempt to apply the methods of natural science to the study of society.'
And Tom Sorell writes that it is : The thought that it is highly desirable
for the concepts and methodology of established sciences to be spread, and
unsatisfactory for, for example, ethics or history to be left in their prescientic
state captures the scientism in scientic empiricism.(
The problem, however, with this view of scientism is that it is not really
plausible to think that the attempt merely to apply methods of natural
% Francis Crick, Of Molecules and Men (Seattle: University of Washington Press,166), p. 1 and 8.
& Tom Settle, You Cant Have Science as Your Religion! in I. C. Jarvie and Nathaniel Laor (eds.)
Critical Rationalism, Metaphysics and Science, Vol. 1. (Dordrecht : Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1) p. 6.
' Philip S. Gorski, Scientism, Interpretation, and Criticism Zygon, Vol. i, No. . (1o), p. i.
( Sorell, Scientism, p. . See also Helmunt Schoeck and James W. Wiggins (eds), Scientism and Values
(Princeton: D. van Nostrand Company, 16o), for a collections of essays united by this theme. Helmunt
Schoeck writes in the introduction to this volume that the word scientism conventionally describes
a type of scholarly trespassing, of pseudo-exactitude, of embracing incongruous models of scientic
method and conceptualization. (p. ix) To some extent Josef Bleicher, The Hermeneutic Imagination. Outline
of a Positive Critique of Scientism and Sociology (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 18i) can also be
understood in this way.
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18 xr i.ii s 1ixx.ni
science in other academic disciplines would be scientistic. Suppose someone
argues for the use of statistics or of inter-subjective procedures (i.e., exper-
imental repeatability) in sociology, and the importance of empirical observa-
tions and of mathematics in philosophy does that make her a defender of
scientism? Hardly. We need a stronger requirement than Gorski and Sorell
oer to make a claim an example of scientism. However, if the claim is that
only statistical (and, for example, no hermeneutical) methods are to be used
in sociology, then things are clearly dierent. Or if the idea is that all proper
sociological methods must yield a result that can be strictly intersubjectively
testable (i.e., the study must be repeatable in such way that if somebody else
carries out the study a second time in exactly the same way the results must
be identical), then this idea can be understood as scientistic.
Robert C. Bannister is, therefore, probably correct in classifying a certain
view as an expression of scientism if it contains a claim such as a scientic
sociology must conne itself to the observable externals of human behaviour
[He continues, saying that this] goal meant an end to the cataloguing of
feelings, interests, or wishes as a principal activity of prewar sociologists .)
Here clearly something more than just the application of some of the methods
of natural science is undertaken. What have previously been considered
proper objects and methods of sociology are also rejected and replaced.
Hence a more appropriate characterization of methodological scientism
follows :
(ih) Methodological scientism is the attempt to extend the use of the methods of
natural science to other academic disciplines in such way that they exclude (or
marginalize) previously used methods considered central to these disciplines.
i. s r ix1r s x wr 1nr x 1ni nno.iin s or i1v
There are, however, other ways of understanding scientism which may or
may not be combined with academic-internal scientism. What these other
forms of scientism have in common is that they attempt to reduce (or
translate) something into science which has not previously been understood
as science or, if that is not attainable, to deny its signicance or possibility.
They all maintain that the boundaries of science can be expanded, in one
way or another, into non-academic areas of human life (such as art, morality,
and religion). They are, therefore, all examples of, what I shall call, academic-
external scientism. We can dene this as :
() The view that all or, at least, some of the essential non-academic areas of human
life can be reduced to (or translated into) science.
Loren R. Graham, in an inuential study, has dubbed views similar to
academic-external scientism expansionism. He writes :
) Robert C. Bannister, Sociology and Scientism. The American Quest for Objectivity, .!!c.,,c (Chapel Hill :
University of North Carolina Press, 18), p. .
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wn.1 r s s r ix1r s x? 1
Expansionists cite evidence within the body of scientic theories and ndings which
can supposedly be used, either directly or indirectly, to support conclusions about
sociopolitical [e.g., moral, political, aesthetic, religious] values. The result of these
eorts is to expand the boundaries of science in such a way that they include, at least
by implication, value questions.*
He denes values as what people think to be good."! In my view,
however, Graham unnecessarily limits expansionism (or scientism) to value
questions. Hence, the dierence between academic-external scientism and
expansionism is that the advocate of the former could, but need not like the
latter, claimthat the boundaries of science can be extended so that it includes
values. Instead, she could, for instance, claim that all beliefs that can be
known, or even rationally maintained, must and can be included within the
boundaries of science. So there is a crucial dierence between these two
concepts not to be overlooked.
Academic-external scientismraises the question of whether there exists any
domain or practice-external limits of science."" Do all the tasks human beings
face actually belong to (or are solvable by) science? In its most bold for-
mulation scientism in this form can be taken to maintain that science has no
such limits. We will see that there are also weaker versions of academic-
external scientism which admit that science has some kind of practice-
external limits.
i.1 Epistemic Scientism
The rst (and probably most common) version of academic-external
scientism (or scientism within the broader society) we shall consider consists
in the attempt to expand the boundaries of science in such a way that all
genuine knowledge must either be scientic or at least be able to be reduced
to scientic knowledge. Ian Barbour denes this view as the claim that the
scientic method is the only reliable path to knowledge."# Roger Trigg
writes that scientism consists of the view that Science is our only means of
access to reality."$ Michael Peterson et al., oer a third way of explicating
this version of scientism. They write that scientism is the idea that science
tells us everything there is to know about what reality consists of ."% We
can call this form of scientism, epistemic scientism, and perhaps dene it as :
() The viewthat the only reality that we can knowanything about is the one science
has access to.
The idea is that what lies beyond the reach of scientists cannot count as
* Loren R. Graham, Between Science and Values (New York: Columbia University Press, 181), p. 6.
"! Graham, Between Science and Values, p. .
"" See Nicholas Rescher, The Limits of Science (Berkeley: University of California Press, 18) for an
excellent discussion of the theoretical limits of science.
"# Ian Barbour, Religion in an Age of Science (New York: Harper & Row, 1o), p. .
"$ Roger Trigg, Rationality and Science (Oxford: Blackwell, 1), p. o.
"% Michael Peterson, William Hasker, Bruce Reichenbach, and David Basinger, Reason and Religious
Belief (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 11), p. 6.
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io xr i.ii s 1ixx.ni
knowledge. The only sort of knowledge we have is the scientic kind of
knowledge. There are no other valid (non-reducible) epistemic activities
apart from science. Carnap seems to express this view when he writes that
although:
the total range of life still has many other dimensions outside of science, within its
dimension, science meets no barrier. When we say that scientic knowledge is
unlimited, we mean: there is no question whose answer is in principle unattainable by science."&
One question of importance for understanding the merits of scientism
concerns what academic disciplines should be considered scientic ones.
What is science ? Any discipline within the academy or at the university could,
in principle, be called a science. (That is the way the term is typically used
in, at least, Swedish and German.) What is characteristic of scientism is that
it works with a narrow denition of science. Before any reduction or trans-
lation has taken place, the advocates of scientism use the notion of science to
cover only the natural sciences and perhaps also those areas of the social
sciences that are highly similar in methodology to the natural sciences. How
broad the denition in the end will be (when the programme is completed)
is a matter of howmany academic disciplines one thinks could be successfully
turned into a natural science.
Thus a claim like All knowledge is scientic should be interpreted to
mean that we cannot know anything about reality which is not knowable
(either directly or after translation) by the methods of inquiry of the natural
sciences. We can also see why this is a reasonable way of understanding
scientism if we consider the most common philosophical criticism of it,
namely that a scientistic claim like All knowledge is scientic is not itself
a scientic but a philosophical claim and is consequently not itself knowable.
If science were dened by the advocates of scientismin such a way philosophy
is considered a part of science proper, this criticismwould loose its point, and
of course, scientism would also loose its point ; it would not be a very
controversial view. Such a scenario does justice neither to scientism nor its
opponents. I am therefore inclined to think that a narrow denition of
science is a necessary condition for a view counting as scientism.
i.i Rationalistic Scientism
It is not always recognised that it is also possible to maintain a stronger
epistemological version of scientism than the above epistemic one. Epistemic
scientism only denies that any claim or belief that cannot be scientically
knowable can constitute knowledge. We cannot knowanything about reality
which transcends the limits of science. Now, many people have some religious
beliefs. Let us suppose that their truth cannot be scientically proved; can
these people still be rational in accepting these beliefs ? An advocate of
"& Rudolf Carnap, The Logical Structure of the World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 16),
p. io.
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wn.1 r s s r ix1r s x? i1
epistemic scientism as dened thus far could accept that. All she is, in fact,
claiming is that we cannot know whether these beliefs are true. From this
proposition alone it does not followthat we are not rational in accepting them.
What is not scientically knowable might still be rationally believable.
Nevertheless epistemic scientism and what I shall style rationalistic scientism
are sometimes confused because it is not recognized that knowledge and
rationality are two distinct concepts. (Epistemic scientism could only entail
rationalistic scientism if these two concepts were shown to be identical.) It
is, however, fairly easy to see that the conditions for knowledge and for
rationality cannot be the same. In general we think that people iooo years
ago were rational in believing that the earth was at (their believing
satisfying the conditions for rationality), but we would not say that they knew
that it was at (their believing satisfying the conditions for knowledge). If
they knew, it follows that the shape of the earth must have changed since
then. Hence the conditions for knowledge and rationality cannot be the
same."' Consequently, one can be rationally entitled to believe things that
are not scientically knowable.
Therefore, a stronger epistemological version of scientism than epistemic
scientismcan be maintained. In fact, Anders Jener seems to dene scientism
along these lines. He writes that the advocate of scientism accepts as reasons
for what one should believe about reality (a) reasons such as those acceptable
within empirical natural science and (b) only such reasons ! "( On such an
account science not only sets the limits for what we can know about reality,
but also sets the boundaries for what is rational to believe. We have styled
this version of scientism rationalistic scientism and can now dene it as :
() The view that we are rationally entitled to believe only what can be scientically
proved or what is scientically knowable.
Bertrand Russell, for instance, betrays the commitment not only to
epistemic but also rationalistic scientism when he writes that :
God and immortality, the central dogmas of the Christian religion, nd no support
in science. No doubt people will continue to entertain these beliefs, because they
are pleasant, just as it is pleasant to think ourselves virtuous and our enemies wicked.
But for my part I cannot see any ground for either. I do not pretend to be able to
prove that there is no God. I equally cannot prove that Satan is a ction. The
Christian God may exist ; so may the Gods of Olympus, or of ancient Egypt, or of
Babylon. But no one of these hypotheses is more probable than any other: they lie
outside the region of even probable knowledge, and therefore there is no reason to consider any of
them.")
"' See my book Rationality in Science, Religion, and Everyday Life. A Critical Evaluation of Four Models of
Rationality (Notre Dame: The University of Notre Dame Press, 1), pp. i16ii, for a detailed
discussion of the dierences between knowledge and rationality.
"( Anders Jener, Livsabskabdningsforskning [Life-View Studies], (research rapport) (Uppsala, 18),
p. 6, my translation.
") Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian (London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1), p. (emphasis
added).
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ii xr i.ii s 1ixx.ni
So, according to Russell, central Christian dogmas do not merely fail to
be scientically knowable, there is not even any reason to consider them at
all. We are thus not rationally justied in believing them either. To show
that a (religious) belief is not scientic is, on such an account, also sucient
for showing that it is neither knowable nor rationally believable.
Note, however, that defenders of both epistemic scientismand rationalistic
scientism accept that science has some practice-external limits. They can
admit that there are other kinds of questions and enterprises beside scientic
ones. They can maintain this point because it does not follow from the claim
that there can be no knowledge or no rational beliefs in the spheres of life
outside science that these other realms are unimportant or less valuable than
science. It might be accepted that human beings do not live by knowledge
alone, other valid and important human activities exist and are necessary for
our ourishing. It might further be accepted that science cannot set the limits
for what exists. For example, God or a Divine Reality might exist. The point
according to some is merely that we cannot know (epistemic scientism) or
rationally believe (rationalistic scientism) anything about such a reality.
i. Ontological Scientism
A more ambitious formof scientism, ontological scientism, does not merely state
that the only reality that we can know (or can rationally believe) anything
about is the one science has access to. It maintains further that only the
reality science can discover exists. Hence, scientismcan involve a claimabout
what kind of things exist out there. We can dene ontological scientism as :
(6) The view that the only reality that exists is the one science has access to.
Reality is what science says it is. Only entities, causes, or processes with
which science deals are real, period. Ontological scientism thus entails
epistemic scientism because we could not know anything about what does
not exist ! We cannot know something about a reality to which science does
not have access, because there is simply no such reality.
One way of stating ontological scientism is to maintain that nothing but
atoms or material particles exist in the world. This is the idea that the only
entities and causes in the world are material objects. Wilson frankly calls this
view scientic materialism."* Carl Sagan also writes, seemingly in the name
of science, that :
I am a collection of water, calcium and organic molecules called Carl Sagan. You
are a collection of almost identical molecules with a dierent collective label. But is
that all ? Is there nothing in here but molecules ? Some people nd this idea somehow
demeaning to human dignity. For myself, I nd it elevating that our universe permits
"* Wilson, On Human Nature, p. io1.
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the evolution of molecular machines as intricate and subtle as we. But the essence
of life is not so much the atoms and simple molecules that make us up as the way
in which they are put together.#!
Sagan apparently thinks that science has shown us that the only things
that exist are material objects and their interactions. We are consequently
merely molecular machines which are not essential dierent from artefacts
(i.e., machines). Sagan further claims that : The Cosmos is all that is or ever
was or ever will be.#" All this, Sagan thinks, is scientically knowable, not
perhaps when the scientic project will be fully developed or completed, but
right here and now. Crick calls these ideas the Astonishing Hypothesis :
The Astonishing Hypothesis is that You, your joys and your sorrows, your mem-
ories and your ambitions, your sense of identity and free will, are in fact no more
than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.
As Lewis Carrolls Alice might have phrased it : Youre nothing but a pack of
neutrons . This hypothesis is so alien to the ideas of most people alive today that
it can truly be called astonishing.##
The ideas of most people have, according to Crick, unfortunately been
shaped by pre-scientic illusions of religion, but only science in the long run
can free us from the superstitions of our ancestors.
Many people think in the light of statements such as these that scientism
and traditional religions such as Christianity and Islam are necessarily
incompatible. John F. Haught says that it may not be science but scientism
that is the enemy of religion [i.e., theism in this case].#$ Scientism claims
that science tells us everything there is to know about reality; it even tells us
what can exist, therefore, religion is seriously undermined or even
superuous. But it is important to notice that this is not necessarily the case.
Recall that there are forms of scientism which admit that science has some
practice-external limits. They accept that there are other valid questions and
enterprises besides science. Hence, if religion is taken to deal essentially with
value questions, religion and scientism (in these forms) can be compatible.#%
Of course, many believers are not satised with such a narrow concep-
tion of religion. (Nor is Haught for that matter.) They claim that God really
exists and that we can know (or at least are rationally entitled to believe)
that God is love, and so on. Is not such a broad conception of religion then
incompatible with scientism? After all, scientism denies that it is possible to
obtain knowledge of God or of a Divine Reality (epistemic scientism) and
that there exists a transcendent (or non-physical) reality beyond the physical
#! Carl Sagan, Cosmos (New York: Ballantine Books, 18o), p. 1o.
#" Sagan, Cosmos, p. 1.
## Francis Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis : The Scientic Search for the Soul (New York: Charles
Scribners Sons, 1), p. .
#$ John F. Haught, Science and Religion (New York: Paulist Press, 1), p. 1.
#% See R. B. Braithwaite, An Empiricists View of the Nature of Religious Belief in Basil Mitchell
(ed.) The Philosophy of Religion (London: Oxford University Press, 11) for a classic defence of this view
and Eberhard Herrmann, Scientic Theory and Religious Belief. An Essay on the Rationality of Views of Life
(Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1) for more contemporary one.
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i xr i.ii s 1ixx.ni
universe (ontological scientism). But to the contrary, scientism does not
necessarily deny these things. While Dawkins, Sagan, Wilson, and others think
along these lines they could be wrong on scientic grounds. This is possible
because all scientism claims is that religious beliefs must satisfy the same
conditions as scientic hypotheses to be knowable, rationally believable, or
real. Hence, people like Dawkins, Sagan, and Wilson take for granted that
religious beliefs cannot meet these requirements, but this could of course be
questioned.
Richard Swinburne, among others, argues that theism can be conrmed
by evidence in much the same way that evidence supports scientic hypoth-
eses. There exist close similarities between religious theories and large-scale
scientic theories.#& Just as science explains phenomena with hypotheses
about atoms, genes, forces, etc., theism explains why the universe exists and
why it looks the way it looks. Swinburne accordingly writes : The structure
of a cumulative case for theism was thus, I claimed [in The Existence of God],
the same as the structure of a cumulative case for any unobservable entity,
such as a quark or a neutrino.#' Only when one can show that the
Swinburnian project (or similar ones) is doomed to fail either because it
cannot deliver what it promises or because it misrepresents religious belief
(or for some other reason), does (a rich conception of) theism become
incompatible with (epistemic, rationalistic, or ontological) scientism.
Hence, scientism cannot right a way be equated with scientic naturalism or
scientic materialism. Given that these are understood as, roughly, the views
that :
(a) matter or physical nature alone is real (all phenomena are merely congurations
of matter), and that
(b) everything that exists (life, mind, morality, religion, and so on) can be completely
explained in terms of matter or physical nature.
This is so because an advocate of either epistemic, rationalistic, or on-
tological scientism need not endorse these views. Another way of putting this
is to say that scientic materialism or naturalism only leaves open the
possibility that God could exist if he\she\it is identical with the physical
world, and hence closes the door for traditional theism or process theism. We
have seen, however, that although perhaps epistemic, rationalistic, and
ontological scientism often do have such implications, that is not necessarily
so.
i. Axiological Scientism
Yet another form of scientism is distinguished by Sorell who denes it as the
belief that science, especially natural science, is much the most valuable part
of human learning .#( He continues : What is crucial to scientism is not
#& Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1), p. .
#' Swinburne, Mackie, Induction, and God Religious Studies. Vol. 1, (18), p 86.
#( Sorell, Scientism, p. 1.
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the identication of something as scientic or unscientic but the thought
that the scientic is much more valuable than the non-scientic, or the
thought that the non-scientic is of negligible value.#) Gerard Radnitzky
understands scientism in a similar way. He writes that the distinction
between science and non-science by no means implies that other activities,
other realms of life, are less valuable. To draw such a conclusion would be
a sure symptom of scientism, a most unscientic attitude.#*
The claim Sorell and Radnitzky identify as scientism is dierent from the
versions of scientismwe have discussed so far in that it has nothing to do with
knowledge or ontology directly, but deals instead with value questions. Let
us, therefore, call this form of scientism or any form that deals with values,
axiological scientism. Sorell and Radnitzky claim that we should dene this
form of scientism as something like:
() The view that science is the most valuable part of human learning or culture.
It might be true that it is not a scientic conclusion to say that other realms
of life are less valuable as Radnitzky writes, or even much more valuable
as Sorell, but is it reasonable to interpret such statements as expressions of
scientism? Suppose one thinks that science is more valuable than art, litera-
ture, philosophy, politics, or sports. Does that make ones view scientistic?
This is true, I would say, only if these and other human activities are of
almost no value or, as Sorell also says, of negligible value. Hence it is one
thing to claim that science is (much) more valuable than non-scientic
realms of human life and another to propose that the non-scientic realms
are of very little or no value at all. Sorell and Radnitzky are thus guilty of
conating (a) believing that science should be valued higher than other
human activities and (b) believing that non-scientic activities are of little
value. Scientism then involves a depreciation (or an underestimation as the
critics would say) of the non-scientic realms of life. Hence a better way of
dening axiological scientism is :
(h) The view that science is the only truly valuable realm of human life. All other
realms are of negligible value.
Sorrell also maintains that views of morality like those of Edward O.
Wilson and Michael Ruse are scientistic.$! Ruses view represents a form of
scientismbecause he claims that on the basis of [a Darwinian] factual theory
about the nature and process of evolution, you can provide a total expla-
nation of morality.$" His basic idea seems to be that morality is an evol-
utionary mechanism that promotes the survival of our genes, no more no
#) Sorell, Scientism, p. .
#* Gerard Radnitzky, The Boundaries of Science and Technology in Proceedings of the Sixth
Internal Conference on the Unity of the Sciences, The Search for Absolute Values in a Changing World, Vol.
II (New York: The Internal Cultural Foundation Press, 18), p. 1o11.
$! Sorell, Scientism, p. 166.
$" Michael Ruse, Taking Darwin Seriously (Oxford: Blackwell, 186), p. i6.
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i6 xr i.ii s 1ixx.ni
less. Wilson writes that ethics will be explained and eventually replaced by
biological knowledge. Now science can search for the bedrock of ethics by
which I mean the material basis of natural law. Morality has no other
demonstrable ultimate function [than to keep the genes intact].$#
If these views are scientistic, they are clearly not examples of axiological
scientismas Sorrell denes it above since they do not claim that science is the
only truly valuable realm of human life. Perhaps Ruse and Wilson also
maintain (h), but it seems quite possible to defend the form of scientism
identied here and deny (h). That is, one could claim that science can fully
explain and provide answers to our moral questions without claiming that
the non-scientic realms are of negligible value. This means that there are
at least two forms of axiological scientism. Let us call (h) axiological scientism
"
and the one identied here, axiological scientism
#
. We can dene the latter in
the following way:
(8) The view that science can completely explain morality and replace traditional
ethics.
Ethics can be reduced to or translated into science. However, for a claim
to be scientistic in this sense, it must maintain more than that science (the
theory of evolution in this case) is relevant to ethics. Nobody would deny
that. It must rather state that science is the sole, or at least by far the most
important, source for developing a moral theory and explaining moral
behavior. In this case the appropriate claim is that the morally correct way
to conduct ones life is something that can be derived exclusively from the
theory of evolution (or science more broadly speaking).
What is the relation of these forms of scientismto the ones we have already
identied? For one thing, axiological scientism
#
does not necessarily entail
epistemic, rationalistic, or ontological scientism. One could claim that sci-
ence can explain morality completely and replace traditional ethics, without
maintaining that the only reality we can know anything about is the one
science has access to, that we are rationally entitled to believe only what is
scientically knowable, or that the only reality that exists is the one science
has access to.
With regard to axiological scientism
"
things are a little bit less straight
forward. It seems logically possible to claim that science is the only really
valuable realm of human life, that other realms are of negligible value, and
deny, for instance, that the only reality we can know anything about is the
one science has access to. However, if we can have non-scientic knowledge,
that would be an argument for thinking that the areas in which we can
possibly attain this knowledge are of some (and thus not necessarily of
negligible) value. Put another way, the belief that the only kind of know-
ledge accessible to us is scientic knowledge constitutes reason for thinking
$# Wilson, On Human Nature, pp. o and 16.
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that only science is of true importance in human life. This is especially so if
one accepts both forms of axiological scientism. If science can provide both
knowledge and values, perhaps we do not have to consider any other realms
of life signicant.
i. Redemptive Scientism
Some scientists seem to have an almost unlimited condence in science
especially in their own discipline and about what could be achieved in the
name of science. Richard Dawkins says that since we have modern biology:
We no longer have to resort to superstition when faced with the deep
problems : Is there a meaning to life? What are we for? What is man?$$
According to him science is capable of dealing with all these questions and
constitutes in addition the only alternative to superstition. Science, he says,
tells us that :
We are machines built by DNA whose purpose is to make more copies of the same
DNAThat is EXACTLY what we are for. We are machines for propagating
DNA, and the propagation of DNA is a self-sustaining process. It is every living
objects sole reason for living $%
Stephen Hawking maintains that scientic cosmological theory will help
us answer the question why we are here and where we came from. And
the goal is nothing less than a complete description of the universe we live
in. In the end we will, with the tools of science, even understand the mind
of God.$&
This could not mean anything less, it seems, than that Dawkins and
Hawking think that science is able to oer us salvation, to fulll the role of
religion in our lives. We can and must put our faith in science. This is also
the way Mary Midgley understands scientism. She writes that scientism is
the idea of salvation through science alone . Science is in the business of
providing the faith by which people live.$' We can perhaps call this form of
scientism, redemptive scientism, and dene it as :
() The view that science alone is sucient for dealing with our existential questions
or for creating a world view by which we could live.
Another writer who expresses a belief in the salvic mission of science is
Wilson. He claims that traditional religion (and ethics) will be explained and
eventually replaced by biological knowledge:
let me give again the reasons why I consider the scientic ethos superior to religion:
its repeated triumphs in explaining and controlling the physical world; its self-
correcting nature open to all competent to devise and conduct the tests ; its readiness
to examine all subjects sacred and profane; and now the possibility of explaining
$$ Richard Dawkins, The Selsh Gene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 18 (ind ed) [16]), p. 1.
$% Dawkins quoted in Michael, W. Poole, A Critique of Aspects of the Philosophy and Theology of
Richard Dawkins Science & Christian Belief, Vol. 6. No. 1, (1), p. 8.
$& Stephen, W. Hawking, A Brief History of Time (London: Bantam Press, 188), pp. 1 and 1.
$' Mary Midgley, Science as Salvation (London: Routledge, 1i), pp. and .
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i8 xr i.ii s 1ixx.ni
traditional religion by the mechanistic models of evolutionary biology. The last
achievement will be crucial. If religion, including the dogmatic secular ideologies,
can be systematically analyzed and explained as a product of the brains evolution,
its power as an external source of morality will be gone forever $(
(Perhaps one may be excused for wondering why science itself is not
discredited by the same logic. Is it not also a product of the brains
evolution? And will not sciences power as a source of knowledge then also
be gone forever once we realize this ?) Wilson posits that science has shown
that religious beliefs are really enabling mechanisms for survival , and
apparently nothing more. Science can explain religion as a wholly material
phenomenon.$) In the place of religion Wilson thinks we should put
something he variously styles scientic materialism, scientic naturalism,
or scientic humanism.$* This is, as I mentioned above the viewthat matter
or physical nature alone is real (all phenomena are merely congurations of
matter) and that everything that exists (life, mind, morality, religion, and so
on) can be completely explained in terms of matter or physical nature.
Scientic materialism can, therefore, also answer, among other things, our
existential questions : It can tell us why we are here, where we come from,
and where we are going. Since there are really no dierences between science
and scientic materialism, science can be, and should be, our religion, or as
I prefer to say, viewof life. As I have already argued elsewhere, for something
to be a view of life it must satisfy certain requirements.%! Is redemptive
scientism in the form of scientic materialism able to do this ?
A view of life must fulll, at least, two tasks. First, it must structure and
make reality intelligible (the theoretical function of a view of life). That is, it must
to some degree make the world a cosmos and determine the place of human
beings in it, and also state what is of value in life. Second, a view of life must
concretely guide people in how they should live their lives, how they should
deal practically with their existential experiences of, for instance, meaning-
lessness, suering, guilt, and love and their interpersonal relationship with
other human beings (the regulative function of a view of life). This is so because
believing in a viewof life is not just a matter of seeing the world in a particular
way, but also a matter of choosing a way of living.
Scientic materialism is able to fulll the theoretical task. It provides its
adherents with a map of reality. It tells us where human beings t in and
what the central values of our existence are. It is less certain whether scientic
materialism can concretely regulate peoples lives in the way traditional
religions have been able to do. Wilson himself seems to be aware of this
problem. The fatal deterioration of the myths of traditional religion has
lead to a loss of moral consensus, a greater sense of helplessness about the
$( Wilson, On Human Nature, p. io1. $) Wilson, On Human Nature, pp. and 1i.
$* Wilson, On Human Nature, pp. io1 and io6.
%! I do not have the space here to argue why these requirements must be fullled. For such an account
see Stenmark, Rationality in Science, Religion, and Everyday Life, chapters and 1o.
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human condition and a shrinking of concern back toward the self and the
immediate future.%" Scientic materialism must face this challenge. It must
supply people with a new myth powerful enough to overcome these destruc-
tive consequences of the deterioration of traditional religious myths. It must
be able to provide a faith by which people actually could live, not only with
a theoretical map of reality. Scientic materialism must not merely be a
vision of life but be a vision for life. Wilson thus suggests :
a modication of [traditional] scientic humanism through the recognition that the
mental processes of religious belief consecration of personal and group identity,
attention to charismatic leaders, mythopoeism, and others represent programmed
predispositions whose self-sucient components were incorporated into the neural
apparatus of the brain by thousands of generations of genetic evolution. As such they
are powerful, ineradicable, and at the center of human social existence. I suggest
further that scientic materialism must accommodate them on two levels : as a
scientic puzzle of great complexity and interest, and as a source of energies that can
be shifted in new directions when scientic materialism itself is accepted as the more
powerful mythology.%#
However, it is not possible now to predict the formreligious life and rituals
will take as scientic materialism appropriates the mythopoeic energies to
its own ends .%$ So our conclusion must be that redemptive scientism in the
form of scientic materialism is indeed a full-edged view of life (or at least
it has the potentiality and ambition to be one).%%
In this form scientism is in competition with traditional religions. Religion
cannot only be explained by science, it can also be replaced by science. And in
this particular form, scientism is equivalent to scientic materialism or
scientic naturalism.%&
i.6 Comprehensive Scientism
Although I have shown that one can accept a particular form of scientism
without necessarily being committed to the other forms, it is of course possible
to accept more or less the whole package. This is also the way scientism
sometimes is understood. Radnitzky maintains that : Scientism is roughly
the view that science has no boundaries, i.e. that eventually it will answer all
theoretical questions and provide solutions for all our practical problems. %'
Arthur Peacocke writes :
The tendency of science to imperiousness in our intellectual and cultural life has
been dubbed scientism the attitude that the only kind of reliable knowledge is
that provided by science, coupled with a conviction that all our personal and social
problems are soluble by enough science.%(
%" Wilson, On Human Nature, p. 1. %# Wilson, On Human Nature, pp. io6io.
%$ Wilson, On Human Nature, p. io6. %% Whether it is science is of course another matter.
%& Although now when the naturalizing of epistemology, ethics, etc., is so popular in philosophy we
have to be extra careful with how we understand the latter notion.
%' Radnitzky, The Boundaries of Science and Technology, p. 1oo8.
%( Arthur Peacocke, Theology for a Scientic Age (Minneapolis : Fortress Press, 1), pp. 8.
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o xr i.ii s 1ixx.ni
The important thing to focus on is the last part of Peacockes statement :
science alone can solve all our personal and social problems. All our personal,
social, theoretical, practical, moral, existential, psychological (you name it)
problems are soluble by science alone.
Perhaps this is also the way we should understand Settle when he writes
that the hallmark of scientism (such as Wilsons scientic materialism) is to
translate everything into sciences terms, as far as it will go and dump the
rest [E]verything not within science is to be reduced to science .%)
Let us call this form of scientism, comprehensive scientism, and dene is as the
view that :
(1o) Science alone can and will eventually solve all, or almost all, of our genuine
problems.
It is perhaps necessary to give a few comments about the meaning of (1o).
First, it is not merely that science can solve all these problems. Science now
needs no help from any other human practice to do it. Is only science that
is able to undertake this task.
Second, comprehensive scientism in its most ambitious formulation
(claiming that science can solve all, and not just almost all, of our problems)
contains probably all other forms of scientism we have identied. If science
alone can deal with all our moral problems, it seems to entail axiological
scientism
#
. If it can alone solve all our problems, the other realms of human
life seem to be of negligible value (axiological scientism
"
). If only science can
give an answer to all our theoretical and practical questions, it seems to
embrace epistemic scientism. It is likely, but not strictly necessary, that
comprehensive scientism would then also include rationalistic scientism. If
science can solve any problem we face, it is probably because what science
cannot discover does not exist (ontological scientism). And since science
alone can solve all our problems, the non-scientic academic disciplines must
be transformed into natural sciences (academic internal scientism
"
). The
only form of scientism comprehensive scientism may or may not include is
academic-internal scientism
#
, that is, the claim the natural sciences them-
selves can be reduced to one particular natural science.
Third, the qualication eventually is important because the claim could
hardly be that contemporary science, or even science within a nearby future,
will be able to solve our problems. Instead it must be what we could call
complete science (that is, what science would be when the scientic project has
been carried through to completion and perfection) that will be able to do
that.%*
Finally, a second qualier is necessary to express appropriately the claim
of comprehensive scientism: science only solves the problems that are legit-
imate or genuine. There is, as Settle pointed out above, a tendency among
%) Settle, You Cant Have Science as Your Religion! p. 6.
%* Rescher, The Limits of Science, pp. .
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wn.1 r s s r ix1r s x? 1
the advocates of comprehensive scientism to dismiss everything that cannot
be translated into the terms of science. There is an inclination to deny that
those problems are genuine or signicant and to claim instead that they are
pseudo-problems or unimportant problems.
. s ixx.nv
I have tried to show that scientism comes in a variety of dierent forms.
We rst have to distinguish between scientism within the academy
(academic-internal scientism) and scientism within the broader society
(academic-external scientism). We made a distinction between two versions
of the former (academic internal scientism
"
and academic internal
scientism
#
). The rst is the view that all, or at least some, of the genuine,
non-scientic academic disciplines can eventually be reduced to science
proper, i.e., natural science. To this the second adds that all natural sciences
can eventually be reduced to one particular natural science.
Among the versions of academic-external scientismwe identied epistemic
scientism (the view that the only reality that we can know anything about
is the one science has access to), rationalistic scientism (the view that we are
rationally entitled to believe only what can be scientically proven or what
is scientically knowable), ontological scientism (the view that the only
reality that exists is the one science has access to), and redemptive scientism
(the view that science alone is sucient for dealing with our existential
questions or for creating a world view by which we could live). Further, two
forms of axiological scientism were distinguished. The rst claiming that
science is the only truly valuable realm of human life, the second that science
can completely explain morality and replace traditional ethics.
We have also seen that these dierent forms of scientism can be combined
in a number of dierent ways. I called the most ambitious combination
comprehensive scientism because it contains all or almost all of these
dierent forms of scientism. It claims that science alone can and will eventu-
ally solve all, or almost all, of our genuine problems.
In short, a narrow denition of science (when science is identied merely
with the natural sciences) plus any of the versions (1) to (1o) above would
turn a claim into scientism.
This variety of forms of scientism also shows that we should not equate
scientism with scientic naturalism or scientic materialism because there
are other possible forms of scientism that do not entail an acceptance of
scientic materialismor naturalism. This variety among versions of scientism
also demonstrates that the relation between scientism and a traditional
religion such as Christianity is not a given. Only between redemptive
scientism and traditional religions is there a direct conict. Other forms of
scientism may or may not be compatible with traditional religions.
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i xr i.ii s 1ixx.ni
Two further questions of importance are whether it is indeed reasonable
to think that science can be ones religion and whether scientism really is
science. I hope to return to these in a future paper.&!
Department of Theology
Uppsala University
Box .cc,
S-,,. ,c Uppsala
Sweden
&! I would like to express my thanks to Philip Hefner for inviting me to the Chicago Center for Religion
and Science (the time during which this article was written) and for his and my colleague Eberhard
Herrmanns helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. I also gratefully acknowledge the nancial
support of the Swedish Council for Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences which made my stay
at the centre possible.